College football TV Week 12: Why the split-national games?

(Note: The ABC/ESPN games have been confirmed and are the same as reported earlier this week.)

There are two Saturday night games matching teams in the top 25. Unfortunately, both are on ABC, which has decided to feature a split-national telecast rather than farm off one of the games to an ESPN partner.

So part of the country will get No. 18 Southern California at No. 4 Oregon, while other places will get No. 5 Oklahoma at No. 25 Baylor. Unless you get ESPN3.com or opt for pay per view, you won’t get both. Instead, the network makes the decision on which game you’ll get.

For the schedule below, we’re assuming that the Capital Region will get USC-Oregon, but the official distribution maps won’t be available until Wednesday.